Burning Pianos

The headline of a short piece in the Times on Saturday lamented that a “family piano given to RAF base burnt in military ceremony by mistake.”  Apparently, a benevolent couple had given their old mahogany piano to the MOD flying base at Boscombe Down in the hope that it might be useful and enjoyed.  Unfortunately, during the annual celebration of the Battle of Britain, the piano had been deliberately destroyed in a pre-planned conflagration which was supervised by firefighters.  Burning pianos, either inside or outside RAF Officers’ Messes is not a new phenomenon but, in my day, it was always spontaneous.  The piano at the Officers’ Mess, RAF Manby, lived in the minstrels’ gallery overlooking the dining room.  If required for entertainment in the bar it was necessary to manhandle the piano down the narrow stairs into the dining room then along the corridor to the bar – a tricky logistics exercise when sober but a piece of cake late at night.  Chris Golds was entertaining the company to one of his celebrated monologues accompanied, as in a silent movie, on the piano by Jock Hamilton.  Increasingly animated, the narrator’s rolled-up copy of the daily Mirror with which he was beating time, was ignited to provide additional visual effect.  When it could no longer be held in the hand, like a Guy Fawkes sparkler, it was discarded into open lid of the piano.  The effect of sparks on the accumulated dust of generations was dramatic.  Pianos in the bar faced other hazards.  I remember a fellow junior Officer writing a suggestion in the blue leather-bound “Mess Suggestions” book requesting that “the legs of the excellent Officers’ Mess piano be repaired and strengthened so that Officers may, once again, dance on the lid.”  The President of the Mess Committee (PMC) didn’t see the funny side of this honest late-night opinion and decreed that, in future, any Officer defacing the Mess Suggestions book would be obliged to buy (from Dolby in Stamford) a “Frivolous Mess Suggestions” book.  Victor Sayfritz (a lovely man), the PMC, clearly hoped that the expense of dealing with the Dolby printing monopoly would deter the pranksters.  Unfortunately, his threatened sanction had entirely the opposite effect, acting as a red rag to a bull in an escalation of silly suggestions.  Outsiders may consider such childish behaviour as vandalism but, of course, sine the playful acts are carried out by Officers, they are merely classed as high spirits.  Burning a piano ranks alongside such jolly japes as dismantling in the President of the Mess Committee’s car and reassembling it in the foyer of the Mess or blowing up a savoy cabbage with a thunder flash during pre-dinner drinks.  Otherwise, life at a typical Dining In Night could be quite hairy.  Flying Officer Smith, appearing dishevelled and with his arm in a sling, was asked by his Commanding Officer how he had come to break his arm during a Mess dinner. “Well Sir,” explained Smith, “I was standing on the mantlepiece in the Ante Room having a quite conversation with Flying Officer Barry when some bastard pushed me off and I was run over by a passing motorcycle.”  Such were the hazards of Mess life in the 1960s!